“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

Dr. Robert R. Owens

The Bible doesn’t leave us hanging. It shows us the way home, how we’re supposed to get across the gulf that exists between us and God. The question that needs to be asked is: do you believe in personal salvation based upon the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus? Or do you believe in a collective salvation which is diametrically opposed to the truth who was born in a manger, lived a perfect life, died on a cross in payment for sin, and rose from the dead.

Our nation was not founded to be a centrally planned socially straight-jacketed empire ruled by the decrees of a sovereign. With President Obama, seconded and supported by his Attorney General Holder, deciding not to enforce laws they disagree with, the rule of law has ended in the United States. We can date our passage from a nation of laws to a nation of men not with this momentous decision but more effectively from the moment our elected representatives declined to declare this action to be unconstitutional and illegal.

Western Civilization burns while our Party of Power plays the fiat financial fiddle. Will we continue the shadow dance pretending we have a limited government or will we muster up the courage to tell our media enhance perpetually re-elected puppet master that he who pays the piper calls the tune? It is time for my generation to admit we have been ripped off for every cent ever extorted from us for Social Security, and the only way we can receive benefits is to have the government extort it from our children and give it to us.

No matter what the polls say I believe that the American people still believe in freedom. Don’t be discouraged by the blather of the pontificating politicians or confused by the conflicting ruminations of the professional talkers. When all is said and done we can trust us. We the people will eventually come down on the side of truth, justice, and the American way.

Symbiosis is the living together in more or less intimate association or close union of two dissimilar organisms as in parasitism. What we are witnessing today is symbiosis on steroids wherein the parasite isn’t merely along for the ride but instead demands the driver’s seat. America has taken such a bizarre turn that oxymorons are the only things that make sense any more.

A debate is merely an argument dressed up in its Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.? So whether we should call our current national dialog a debate or an argument depends upon the sensibilities of the writer and the reader.? For the purposes of fairness and inclusiveness I will therefore coin a new term, “Argubate.”

We are witnessing the tyranny not of the majority but instead of the majority of voters coming to fruition. In America in a typical election, only 50% or less of eligible voters bothers to cast their ballot. Many congressional districts are gerrymandered into personal possessions, local counties, cities and states belong to good-old-boy networks and the Senate is the province of millionaire media stars. The uninformed elect the unqualified to give them what is unearned.

America has provided more freedom for more people than any other country that has ever existed. It is also my opinion that powers of anti-freedom have sought to regain control since the Revolution, and if those who have been too busy working and raising families don’t spend enough time to learn what history teaches we will soon earn the reward for the failure to hold on to the past. We will lose the future.

The Federal Reserve isn’t mentioned in the Constitution. How did the Federal Reserve get its power over our currency and our economy, and is the Federal Reserve constitutional? At the dawn of the Republic, our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton issued several reports which in many ways set the tone and pointed the way for the development of America in the economic sphere.

The National Debt didn’t start under Barak Obama or George Bush. It didn’t start under FDR or Wilson or Lincoln. So where did it come from and when did it start? Is national debt good or bad? Is it constitutional or unconstitutional?

What would the reaction of the media would have been if when Enron imploded it was revealed that the Bush Administration had guaranteed a half billion dollars in loans.What has the reaction of the media been now that we know the Obama Administration pushed a $535 taxpayer-backed loan against the advice of the OMB…and now that company is belly-up?

Hope and change were the magic words that swept a relatively unknown, inexperienced Barack Obama into the Oval Office. He campaigned as the one able to fix the Bush economy. Once in office, he has protested that he didn’t know how bad the economy was even though that was what he had run his campaign on. The solution to our current malaise is not more of the same. It isn’t spreading the wealth around in a step-by-step slide into socialism.

Is there any one political or economic system that God wants everyone to follow? I do not believe God has ordained any one type of government or economy as the divinely ordained path. However when one examines the principles which God favors, there are political and economic systems which are closer to God’s character, and some that are farther away from God’s standards. So which are they?

Over a century of propaganda and indoctrination has conditioned most Americans to accept one of the most insidious aspects of class warfare as a natural and respectable feature of our government: progressive taxation. Leftists have turned the legend of Robin Hood on its head. After returning from a war of choice initiated by an absentee king in the Middle East, Robin learned his estate had been taxed away. Finding this level of abuse intolerable, he became an outlaw, stealing the ill-gotten loot government agents were extorting from the people in the form of taxes and then returned the money to those who had actually earned it.

If History doesn’t help us to live in the present it is merely curiosity or voyeurism that compels us to gaze upon the past. Everyone knows and many people say, “Those who fail to learn from History are doomed to repeat it.” I believe that a historical context is necessary for any understanding of the present. I also believe that a lack of historical context is one of the major contributing factors to the current state of affairs in America. I do not, however, believe that historical events repeat.

We as citizens who love our country must to break the logjam caused by an imperial presidency, an abdicating legislature, an activist court, a suffocating bureaucracy, and the strangulation of regulation. It’s time to actively work for America’s acceptance of a different way. Something radical, something that almost strains the bounds of the imagination, something that would immediately unleash the bent-up energy of a free people: a return to constitutionally limited government!

The grassroots Tea Party that swept the 2010 elections and made Boehner Speaker clearly want an end to an ever-increasing debt. Yet every plan of the perpetually-re-elected Republicans merely slows the growth of the debt they do not reduce the debt. Since neither party seems willing to drain the swamp, it is time to flood the swamp with calls, letters, and visits. Demand that our representatives represent us and not themselves or their fellow insiders. Stop the deficits! Pay down the debt! And don’t make a Corrupt Bargain that will lead us and our posterity further down the road to serfdom.

We all think we are invincible. We all think we will have another day. Then one day there isn’t another day and our day is done. With his dismal record of retrenchment and failure how can President Obama possibly win re-election? His only chance is the Clinton formula. There has to be a viable third party candidate or the Republicans could resurrect Herbert Hoover and win in a landslide.

Concluding my three part series in celebration of our nation’s 235th Birthday, we will look at arguments advanced by both sides. Last week we ended with the question, who were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and why does it matter to us today? This week we will learn the answers to the questions. Who was debating? What did they have to say? Who won? And, why does it matter to us today? The Federalists had the momentum from the beginning and they were wise enough to appropriate the name Federalist.

New Speak is nothing new in politics, and the concept of words having power to shape reality was not invented by George Orwell. Look at the original debate of the ratification of the Constitution, and as a consequence how we have studied, learned, and even shaped the debate in this lecture concerning the ratification of the Constitution. First, what about the terms, “Federalist” and “Anti-Federalist” how appropriate were they during the debate?

To understand the debate over the ratification of the Constitution it is necessary to first establish the context, for the study of a text without a context is a pretext. Therefore, each of the next three weeks I will post one installment of a short refection on the ratification debate. Was the Constitution the first document produced to form the United States of America? Does it mark the beginning of our nation and its government?

Who will the GOP nominee be? Will it be someone who could fire up the rank-and-file or will it be another in the long line of “It’s My Turn” RHINOs that the Party sets up to get knocked down? Will Romney be the next McCain, the next Dole, or the next George H. W. Bush? Four more years of managed decline without a re-election to restrain him and President Obama’s transformational vision of America as just another country may become more than just the content of his latest apology or the lesson taught to our children in public schools.

The Greeks face an economic implosion, so President Obama wants to borrow money from China so he can bail out Greece. The looting of America has a tremendously high price, and it remains unclear whether Republicans in the House have what it takes to force responsible change. Come on Charlie Brown, kick the football. Lucy promised she won’t move it this time.

The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media constantly trumpets the claim that President Obama was a Professor of Constitutional Law. But in this long over looked quote from a radio interview a Pre-President Obama laments the negative liberties he sees as a flaw in the Constitution and waxes eloquent in defense of the redistribution of wealth and the positive power of an intrusive welfare state. Personal liberty is always and only possible when and where external control stops.

Today many have forgotten that the “TEA” in the modern Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already!” Millions express frustration and the belief that our elected representatives no longer pay any attention to us once they get to Washington. Are we about to learn that if history doesn’t exactly repeat itself it sure does rhyme?